Myrtle Beach

I guess I need to update my blog, since it has been awhile. Book sales have been slow. I was hoping for a huge amount of sales, but so far I have only sold about 50. Not exactly earth shattering. I need to figure out a better way to promote it. It has been out for over a month now. Maybe it will just take some time.

Gardening season is underway. My seedlings did great this year. My tomato plants are so big that there is no more room under the grow light. They are past knee high! They seriously need to be planted, but we keep getting frost, so I haven't planted them yet. My pepper plants and celery plants are tiny though. I will still plant them, but they are little bitty. The cabbage and broccoli plants are huge too, and are going to be planted soon. I have been really happy with my seedlings this year, except for my peppers and celery. I think they will still grow, despite being so small. The weather here has been sooo strange. I have strawberries on my plants.....and it is only May. They are green and the size of marbles, but they are still there. That is about a month early. In February, it was so warm that Evie was outside in a swimsuit playing in the water. For this area, that is insane. It got into the high 80's in March, and in April it frosted almost every day :(. Not good. The grape and apple crop this year took a huge hit.

We went to Myrtle Beach, SC for spring break, and got back about a week ago. It was the longest vacation we have taken in quite some time. We were gone 10 days. It was a lot of fun, and we had great weather. We went with Jeff's parents, and we drove. It was a really long drive!!

Here are some pictures from our trip.....

We stayed at a gorgeous resort that was part of my in-laws timeshare. This was our view from our balcony, in the suite we were staying in. It had a full kitchen, and 2 full bedrooms. The pools at the resort were so pretty, and we were within easy walking distance to the beach (which was private for resort people only).

Evie loved the beach. She had never seen the ocean before, so she loved it. We went looking for shells almost every morning.

I had never seen a jellyfish up close before. I was glad it wasn't alive, seeing as I was that close to it! There was lots of them that would wash up on shore, and they would either be dead or dying.

One of the many times we went miniature golfing. They had such fun places there!!

 Jeff and I celebrated our 18th anniversary the day we got back from our trip. We got to have a fun date while we were in Myrtle Beach, while my in-laws watched Evie :).

One thing about Myrtle Beach...it is SO windy! There seriously wasn't such thing as a good hair day while we were there. If I lived there, it would be really hard to ever wear my hair down. I had that beachy, wind-blown look the entire week.

New stratagies

I want to thank you all for your encouraging words. I owe some of you emails, and will do that soon. I apologize for my previous post. It really was a giant pity party to myself. Thankfully, I am over it now :). After a week of feeling extremely low, I realized I was being ridiculous. God doesn't want me to act like that. I need to trust Him. To explain our adoption situation, the adoption plans were put on hold because of finances, and because of Jeff's job situation. His company was bought out about 2 weeks ago, which could be either good or bad. It could put his job, and everyone elses at the company in jeopardy. He has been in this situation twice before. One company he worked for was bought out, and they got rid of most of the employees and started over. The other company that he worked for that was bought out ended up keeping the employees. We are praying hard that they keep all of the employees at his company. He is feeling an urgency to go back to school to finish his business degree, and get out of engineering completely. Sales jobs are a lot easier to find than engineering jobs. If he does go back to school, the money that we have saved so far for the adoption would need to go to that. That is why we aren't sure we will be able to do the adoption.

I have been brainstorming, trying to figure out ways I can help the situation. Jeff has always wanted me to write a book. That is actually what I am doing! I started it yesterday, and it is going to be a Kindle book. With a Kindle book, it can be read on any device, even a PC, as long as you download the free Kindle app. I am writing a gluten free/casein free/soy free cookbook. Then I plan on promoting it on autism websites where the diet is very popular. Kindle publishes for free as long as I set the price low (it will be $2.99). They take a percentage of the profits, and I get the rest. I have been cooking the gfcfsf way for a long time now, and have been daily tweaking regular recipes to make them gfcfsf. Because Evie and I have to eat this way, it has been a goal of mine to copycat recipes that taste great. So far, the book will have over 100 recipes. I am excited about that! I didn't realize I had come up with that many! If I can make enough money, it will help to pay for the adoption and Jeff's schooling too. That is my goal. I am going to be busy these next few months! My plan is to write at least 20 recipes a week in the book. I am going to have to make a lot of these recipes first, because I tend to just throw ingredients in without measuring. Jeff was happy to hear that I needed to make all the dessert recipes :). I am excited, and hopeful. It may be a long shot, but it may be a huge answer to prayer for us!